Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, 'A house guest,' you're wrong because I have just described my kids.

My new house has a deck that wraps around my writing room; my writing room has many windows, and outside the windows I've hung bird feeders... for enticing different species. So I imagine I will be writing about that.

It's funny that there was so much disturbance about having a Catholic in the White House with Kennedy, and when we finally get a religion in the White House that's causing a lot of conflicts, and concerns, and disturbances for a lot of people, it's in the Bush Administration.

My parents were very well-off, but we didn't have a crazy-huge house. We didn't have thousands of workers and staff; it was just my mum doing the majority of the housework. We didn't have nannies. I wasn't brought up in any sort of extravagant way.

I'm going to reduce the size of the Cabinet, cut the number of ministers, reduce the size of the House of Commons, campaign for a European Parliament with 100 fewer members, halve the number of political advisers, and abolish a huge swathe of Labour's regional bureaucracies and agencies and their offices in Brussels.

What's fascinating about D.C., the exteriors are these elaborate structures, this gorgeous architecture and beautiful stonework, and then you go inside and it's crap-looking - apart from the White House, which is beautiful.

I just always knew that I lived in two worlds. There was the world of my house and community, but to make my way in that white world I had to modify the way I spoke and acted. I had to sometimes not make direct eye contact.